Brotherly Commerce

Richard Geppert (left) and Pat Marconi

In the City of Brotherly Love, Geppert Bros. Inc. has been in the business of demolition and recycling for eight decades, from the days of hand wrecking and salvage to today’s mechanized demolition and concrete recycling. And the expectation of company principal Richard Geppert is that the company will be there for a long time to come.

Geppert Bros. Inc. was founded in the Philadelphia area by Richard’s father 80 years ago, and today two of the four brothers (oldest brother William is the other), are still involved in the day-to-day operations of the business.

Both started in the family-owned business at a young age, and have watched and participated in the changes in the demolition industry. One of the biggest and best changes Richard Geppert has seen has been the increased focus on safety.

"Safety used to be much more relaxed in the old days by all contractors," he says. "Safety awareness has greatly improved and the necessary PPE (personal protective equipment) is used much more conscientiously." He adds that besides the obvious human benefit, there is an economic one as well, as insurance rates have dropped relative to the overall cost of business because of the industry’s increased safety rates.

But the other big change is in the equipment to do the job. Hand wrecking with lots of salvage was the norm when Richard started in the business more than 40 years ago. Indeed, the company used to have a large salvage yard for many years, but eventually transformed it into a traditional lumber yard run by a third brother, Jim.

Now if the company does any salvage, it tries to sell the material off of the job site. "By the time you spend the money to move it out with union labor and take it back to the yard, it is expensive. Then when you get slow in the winter and want to clean up the yard, you end up throwing away most of it anyhow after it sits a couple of years," says Geppert. "So it really doesn’t pay for us."

What does pay off for the company is its continued use of the old industry standby, the crane. Geppert Bros. Inc. still has three of them in operation, and they make sense because of the company’s focus on commercial work. "They can sit for six months sometimes, but then you get a job that is 10 or 12 stories high and you need to go out there with a crane and ball it down to a height ready for the excavators."

However, those three cranes are down from the five the company used to have years ago. Geppert Bros. Inc. has recognized the ascendancy of the excavator in the demolition business, and now has seven of the machines. All are from Komatsu, and all the attachments—grapples, pulverizers, and shears—are from Stanley-LaBounty.

The company still operates three Caterpillar loaders equipped with demolition buckets. They are mostly used to load out material at the job site. "But the excavators can do almost anything the loaders can do," says Geppert. "And you really can’t find guys who want to run [the loaders]; they all want the excavators."

He does find it difficult to find operators for the cranes, too, as well as torch cutters, which aren’t as critical anymore because of the modern shearing equipment. Geppert Bros. Inc. has been fortunate because the company has been able to hold onto the same operators for 20 years or more.

Using the same supplier for each type of equipment is no accident, Geppert says. It makes maintenance easier because the equipment is almost interchangeable so operators know where, for example, the air filters are on all the machines and can change and clean them as needed. It is also easier for the operators to run different company equipment because the controls are basically in the same place from machine to machine.

Streamlining manufacturers also allowed the company to cut back to three or four mechanics, down from eight, because today’s equipment is easier to service, and using one brand improves the efficiency of the mechanics. Geppert Bros. Inc. also trades in its older equipment faster than it used to. "Today’s equipment lasts longer because it is better built," he adds.

Another evolution for Geppert Bros. Inc. has been the purchase of an Eagle Crusher Co. Model 1200 crusher about five years ago. Geppert says it was purchased for a specific job, a huge naval hospital in Philadelphia. If it had not been purchased, the company would have had to lease one.

"We never had one before, and I remember thinking, ‘What am I going to do with it after I finish this job?’ But we have kept it busy," he says. "You find jobs for it, or you rent it out." Geppert does not have a recycling yard for it, but still says the purchase of the crusher was a profitable endeavor, although he does wish he had bought the next bigger size. Even if Geppert Bros. Inc. isn’t using its crusher on a job, it still brings as much of the concrete as possible to other concrete recyclers near the job because tipping fees are so high in and around Philadelphia.

Outside of concrete and metals, most of the material generated at demolition sites is sent to transfer stations in the Philadelphia area. "But it is getting more expensive there every year, anywhere from $56 to $64 per ton," says Geppert. An hour away is a landfill in Delaware that has a tipping fee of $35 to $40 per ton, "but the travel eats up the savings. You need a lot of trucks to do that."

Geppert Bros. Inc. purposefully doesn’t have a lot of trucks. The company has only six tractors, down from 12 a few years ago. Geppert says, "It doesn’t pay to have that many. If we need more than six, we get owner/operators with tractors to pull our demolition trailers. That’s a lot easier than keeping drivers and keeping them busy."

Competitive, low-profit bidding has been a recent problem for Geppert Bros. Inc.. "Four or five years ago we were so busy and that was reflected in our bids." Now, competition from demolition contractors from outside the area, combined with Philadelphia’s highly publicized razed building program of tearing down homes, which mostly include selective demolition of a row home here and a row home there demolished by the small-time guys, has forced Geppert Bros. Inc. to extend its market coverage to outside of the city and start focusing on the surrounding tri-state area.

Recycling is another, newer issue that has become a vital part of the demolition industry. Geppert says, "While recycling is a good thing for the environment, it is not always the most economic choice. If a dump site is close by and the recycling center is miles away, it adds to the cost, and needless to say, customers do not want higher prices. Therefore, sometimes we have to eat some of the costs."

An active market has been interior demolition, which the company has been doing for nearly 20 years. Geppert says the introduction of skid steers has improved the efficiency of this practice. Geppert Bros. Inc. has nine of them, all made by Bobcat. "It helps when you can put them into the building to do the work," Geppert says. "They are small, so they can get in there and do the work, requiring less labor."

Geppert Bros. Inc. has been around for 80 years and has been active in industry functions much of that time. The company is a founding member of the National Demolition Association. Indeed, William Geppert was on the original board of directors for the association. It looks like the company will be around for a long time to come.